Peter Cleverley: Between Transience and Eternity

(Hardback)

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This beautiful, heavily illustrated book traces Peter Cleverleys formation and evolution as an artist, identifying the myriad influences that aroused in him a profound sense of the transience of human life and the paradoxical complexity of the human condition. The portrait that results shows how Cleverleys sense of the human condition has allowed him to convey it symbolically in a way that simultaneously captures not only the fragility of human life, but also its joys. His art communicates an appreciation of the beauty of this world and the gift of being alive, together with the value of art as a means of transcending mutability. Cleverley is a painter whose work is destined to be recognised for making an important contribution to the history of art in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Author Bio

Alistair Fox is a New Zealand scholar, former university administrator, and writer who specialises in English Tudor literature and history, New Zealand literature and cinema studies, contemporary literary and film theory, particularly with regard to national identity and the creative process. From 20192022, he has regularly written catalogue essays, most frequently for RDS Gallery, Dunedin, which he owned from 20202022. Despite his involvement in international scholarship, Alistair Fox has lived his whole life in the South Island of New Zealand, and has developed his career from his base in the University of Otago, where he taught several generations of students for 40 years. A keen tramper who loves the bush and mountains of Te Waipounamu, he has always been especially interested in the influence of the landscape on the New Zealand psyche, a theme that he has recently pursued in studies of art by Otago painters who have exhibited at RDS Gallery, which is now directed by his wife, Hilary Radner.